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By Jaclyn Reiss, Town Correspondent

Photo courtesy of Brandeis University

John Unsworth of Brandeis University

A Brandeis University administrator was chosen this month by White House officials to serve on a national board that influences funding for the humanities in the United States, according to a statement from the school.

John Unsworth, vice provost for the college’s Library and Technology Services and an English professor at Brandeis, was appointed Aug. 5 to the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency that funds universities, public television and radio, libraries and individual scholars in America.

He will serve through Jan. 26, 2016. He replaces Brandeis alum Jean Elshtain, who is now a University of Chicago professor in the college’s Divinity School.

Unsworth’s responsibilities on the national council of over two dozen include reviewing grant proposals and advising top National Endowment for the Humanities officials on policies, procedures and programs, according to a statement from Brandeis.

Unsworth said in the statement that he looks forward to working on the board.

“This is a particularly important time to be assisting the NEH,” he said, “as proposed House legislation aims to cut its funding in half.”

Unsworth has worked with the national agency for about 20 years as a grant recipient, a review panelist, and as a consultant on the development of the Office of Digital Humanities, according to Brandeis officials.

Before he joined Brandeis in 2012, Unsworth served as dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he helped double the school’s budget and research funding, according to the statement.
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